creativity is the bomb - celebrate it with me!

not feeling “worthy” as an artist

Alternative title: How to not feel like a lesser artist the Jessica Andersdotter way: think about it!Also: Way too long post with some random pictures to make it lighterAnd lastly: Kind of interesting actually.

Sup guys. What’s crackalackin? Personally I’m kind of excited, because I’ve been having ~*thinking sessions*~ about my ~*art*~ and had some ~*insights*~. The reason behind this is actually called “art school”. More specifically “application for art school”, where I need to write a kind of description of myself as an artist. Which seemed really hard but turned out to be MIND BLOWING and SO MUCH FUN. So today we’re gonna discuss my identity as an artist a little bit (a lot bit actually), and my journey to finally maybe feeling like I’m actually a “worthy” artist.

The rational part of my brain has known that me not being “worthy” is utter bullshit for a while now, but then there’s that insecure little fellow in the corner who is SO LOUD and was like “YES BUT NO BECAUSE AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” and then the rational gal left because she couldn’t stand the sound. That’s how brains work, right?

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about why I create, why I create what I create and things like that. The fact is that I’ve never been a political artist. It’s not like I don’t have opinions and thoughts about society, it’s just that I don’t process it through art. A lot of times I’ve felt like a lesser artist because of this, like my art isn’t as meaningful as art that has that deeper purpose or is political. I’ve tried searching for a deeper (political) purpose that would suit me, but that hasn’t worked out. Inspiration level: zero.

And this actually reminds me a lot of when I studied photography for a few years in school, and felt like my work wasn’t meaningful because it didn’t feature people. I remember some of my classmates creating these really emotional portraits, and there I was taking pictures of flowers. I felt so superficial and simple. It wasn’t until I graduated that I realised that this wasn’t at all the case. I was just doing something different from them, not something of lesser value. We all live our own creative lives, and even though I know that now it seems like I still question my own work whenever I’m surrounded by people that are (or seem to be) really confident about what they create. Which the ~world wide web~ is full of.

So back to my art today.I’ve been working almost exclusively with abstract art for a few months now, and it has kind of set me free from the thought that I need to have that clear message in every image. However, this lack of a clear message has in turn made me question if there’s any point in my work at all. Other than it being nice to look at. Because as much as I think that art doesn’t need any other purpose than that, I feel like I need more purpose than that.

And then I started writing that application. And I was like “Uh wtf do I write here? I make pretty abstract things that mean nothing?”. Because that’s honestly the way I felt about them, at least when I started questioning everything. But suddenly I realised – the secret to my art is that I don’t question it. It’s not about a purpose and a hands-on message, at all. Or a plan. It’s about something else – it’s about intuition and emotions. I don’t question the process, I don’t question the result, I create what I want to create and what feels right.

And how silly of me to have mistaken this for something superficial and simple. I should’ve realised it wasn’t that time someone called my art magical. I should’ve known that time a new piece made me feel so much. I should’ve known that time someone said “your art will make people feel again”. (Which is btw maybe the nicest thing someone has ever said to me.) The problem was that I hadn’t realised what I was actually doing.

Like, I’m letting my subconscious run free. Ever heard of that before? (If you haven’t studied art history you might have not actually but whatevs.) I’m being a freaking modern day surrealist. This is automatism. I’M DALI MOTHERFUCKERS. Only it’s abstract. And there are less melting clocks. Okay, I’m not Dali. Maybe I’m actually more like an abstract expressionist, it doesn’t really matter, what matters is that I create based on emotions and intuition rather than ideas and logic. And that’s great!

Because what was important with this was that I could also remind myself that neither intuition nor logic is better than the other when it comes to art, and that what matters is creating and creating something that feels right to you.

For me, art is a way to free myself from overthinking, eternal reflections and the constant demand for reason. I just want to be unreasonable, god dammit!! I want to glitch the hell out of those images and make them unrecognisable.

I want to let go of reality and reason and let my creative self do whatever it wants.
And I think I’ve finally realised that there’s a lot of artistic value in that.

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